Seamus Heaney Quotes

But when dawn broke and day crept in
over each empty, blood-spattered bench,
the floor of the mead-hall where they had feasted
would be slick with slaughter. And so they died,
faithful retainers, and my following dwindled.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

Then I thought of the tribe whose dances never fail / For they keep dancing till they sight the deer.

Instead, in the morning, mangled and sleeping
the sleep of the sword, they slopped and floated
like the ocean's leavings.

Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

-Blackberry picking

Islanders too
are for sculpting.

There’s a whole economy of kindness Possible in the world; befriend a friend And the chance of it’s increased and multiplied.

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure
The bastion of sensation. Do not waver
Into language. Do not waver in it.

More than loud acclaim, I love
Books, silence, thought, my alcove.

"I step through origins
like a dog turning
its memories of wilderness
on the kitchen mat:

the bog floor shakes,
water cheeps and lisps
as I walk down
rushes and heather.

I love this turf-face,
it's black incisions,
the cooped secrets
of process and ritual:
-"Kinship

People so staunch and true, they're fixated,
Shining with self-regard like polished stones.
And their whole life spent admiring themselves
For their own long-suffering.
Licking their wounds
And flashing them around like decorations.
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself.

I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Only the very stupid or the very deprived can any longer help knowing that the documents of civilization have been written in blood and tears, blood and tears no less real for being very remote.

The writing of certain poems took me to the bottom of myself, something inchoate but troubled. [...] The Troubles, you might say, had muddied the waters, but I felt these poems ["The Guttural Muse" and others] arrived from an older, deeper, cleaner spring.

Terrible times. I managed to come through But I never healed. My whole life has been Just one long cruel parody.